From Gaza’s velodromes to Mexico’s avocado groves, the 2026 Impact Lab at FIFDH’s Industry Days is staking out the frontline of social-justice documentary.
Run alongside Geneva’s International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights each March, the #Impact Lab# is not a film market in the usual sense. It is a training and matchmaking hub that selects a dozen projects, teaches their teams to build detailed impact campaigns, and then plugs them directly into NGOs, UN agencies, foundations and grassroots groups gathered around the city. This year’s cohort was chosen from almost 200 submissions across 70 countries and culminates in three Impact Days (8–10 March 2026) during the main festival.
The 2026 selection moves across fault lines of #war, #climate and creeping #authoritarianism. Gaza Sunbirds follows a young amputee cyclist and his underdog team as they pursue the dream of representing #Palestine, turning competitive sport into a question of survival under bombardment. In Green Gold, Selim Benzeghia and Ivonne Serna drill into Mexico’s avocado heartlands, where land defenders, small producers and cartel violence collide under the pressure of global demand.
Land and memory are also at stake in Green Is the Fire’s Tint, in which Somi, a former #Maoist rebel, becomes a guide to #Indigenous struggles over territory and cultural heritage in central #India. In Albania-set Olimbi – Mother Courage, the discovery that Olimbi Hoxhaj and her children are #HIV positive in a country without treatment becomes the starting point for a long fight against stigma and institutional neglect.
Several projects track the afterlives of war. The Blue Sweater With a Yellow Hole offers intimate access to Ukrainian children who escaped Russian «re-education» camps, transforming their drawings into animation to process #trauma and document #indoctrination. Women and War follows three Ukrainian survivors of captivity and gender-based violence as they undergo therapy and attempt to reclaim their lives. In This Is Not a Civil War, a Burmese activist returns clandestinely to post-coup #Myanmar to meet young people rebuilding democratic life without weapons.
The lineup also includes high-risk, confidential projects such as UFO and Water Is Coming, which will be developed and connected to partners away from the spotlight.
The far right appears not as distant history but as present tense. The Quiet Part charts the rise of a pagan #white supremacist# group in rural America, while Maris Salumets’ War on Women turns a family rupture into a global investigation of far-right networks attacking gender rights under the banner of «traditional values».
